Speaker placement is critical to getting the best performance from your loudspeakers, regardless of cost. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I will instead point you to John Atkinson’s excellent article Getting the Best from Your Loudspeakers. I used his suggestions as the starting point for setting up the Living Sounds Audio LSA.5 monitor speakers...
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I downloaded the Eric Clapton song I Looked Away from the album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs from HDTracks which is supposed to be 96/24. I ran it trough the spectrum analyzer in iZotope RX and here is what I found: That gentle curve up and then down from 20kHz to 48kHz looks...
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There are two reasons 192/24 might provide higher quality audio. First, at twice the sampling rate, there are twice as many samples resulting in a smoother reconstructed wave form. Second, high frequency response is extended from 48kHz to 96kHz. I thought it would be interesting to look at the same audio file at both...
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I founded the Ultra High-End Forum in early 2009, and for the past two and a half years have been immersed in the world of ultra high-end audio and home theater. Having attended ten audio trade shows, including CES, CEDIA, AXPONA, T.H.E. Show, RMAF, and AKFest, most multiple times, I have heard virtually all...
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I asked myself: “If I were interested in a new two-channel audio system, where would I go to buy one in my home town of Nashville, Tennessee (also known as Music City USA because of its deep roots in the country music business)?” You never know when a friend is going to ask your...
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Rarely do I find myself in agreement with Steve Guttenberg, but he speaks the truth in his latest installment of The Audiophiliac wherein he praises the Etymotic ER-4 in-ear earphones. I have had ER-4S for over a decade. I am on my second pair. I originally purchased them to listen to music when...
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I stumbled across a treasure-trove of information on turntables and vinyl on at The MasterDisk Record, a blog by Scott Hull, a respected mastering engineer and owner of MasterDisk Studio in NYC. Grab a a cup of coffee and have an enjoyable read. Week 1: Introduction: the Basics of Cutting Records Week 2: An...
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Simeon Louis Sandiford has posted an excellent overview of the role of the recording engineer and the importance of both venue and equipment selection in achieving well-balanced and real-life recordings at Ultra Audio. Well worth the read. You can access it here.
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I ran across this Pro Tools plug-in from iZotope and thought I would give it a try on some of my CDs. Sure beats buying a turntable, cartridge, phonostage and LPs. I bet the Beatles remasters will sound just like I remember them from the 1960′s. Registration screen and plug-in interface: I did a...
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This from JV’s Magico Q5 blog: As I think I’ve said, I’m currently using a combination of traditional room treatments (such as ASC tube traps, RPG Skyline, and AV Room Services Metu panels) and non-traditional ones (Shakti Hallographs and Synergistic Research ART resonators, which are here on test). The “magnetically-tuned” bowls of the Synergistic...
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Neil Gader did a shoot-out of thirteen power cords in the latest issue of The Absolute Sound. His test bed was an Audio Research CD-5 compact disc player and the Audio Research DSi200 integrated amplifier. He didn’t specify what speakers he was listening to. The power cord reference was the $2600 Synergistic Research Tesla...
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Still ruminating over Jonathan Valin’s recent “martini: vs. “Jack and coke” review of the Audio Research Ref 5 preamplifier, and having run across a dandy little audiophile cliche generator over at AudioAficionado, I thought that what the world needed was an authoritative lexicon for the audiophile press to use when describing audio components so...
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The question is ofter ask whether jitter is audible. It is a hot topic on at least three forums at the moment. The only thing we know for sure is that random jitter in amounts from tens to hundreds of nanoseconds is audible, the threshold level depending on the equipment, the listener and the...
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The following is an excerpt form an article entitled “Familiarity Breeds Contempt” by John Giolas, marketing director of Wilson Audio, which appeared in Wilson Audio’s March 2009 Authentic Excellence newsletter: oday, the challenge to maintain a correct impression of Wilson Audio is more difficult than ever before. On the internet, and particularly in “forums”...
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Here is an interesting story from the New York Times which is seems applicable for audiophiles asking why some manufacturers’ pricing is stratospheric. EVEN in a season when designers made no secret about reining in prices to appeal to the newly chastened luxury consumer, it is still possible to walk into a store and...
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Here is a collection of audiophile cartoons. Enjoy!
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My daughter is a senior in college. While she was at home for Spring break, we went car shopping as she is going to need something to get her to and from what we hope will be a job when she graduates in May. Which of course got me to thinking about the relative...
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A VU Pioneer TX-9500 II This NPR essay was posted on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s website: There are still people willing to drop a large chunk of their income on the best audio equipment available, says music professor Mark Katz. “That said,” he adds, “the landscape or perhaps soundscape has changed.” You may remember the...
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The Absolute Sound was begun in the Spring of 1973. As a part of its 200th issue retrospective,TAS published on its website an introductory history, an editorial by HP which appeared in Issue 1 and a classic review from Issue 13. The full text can be found here. I want to quote a small...
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I ran across this very thoughtful editorial from the on-line Polish publication High-Fidelity about high-end audio and I thought I would share it with you. HIGH END What is high-end? What defines it? When is a device high-end and when not? These are the questions posed again and again by music lovers as well...
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As we head into the feeding frenzy that is CES, this 25 year old article in Stereophile by J. Gordon Holt, Larry Archibald and Anthony Cordesman bears re-reading: Now that Stereophile‘s reporting on the 1985 Summer Consumer Electronics Show has ended (I hope!), I would like to express strong dissent with its style and...
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I am visiting my son in Boston this week and no visit to the area is complete for an audiophile without a trip to Goodwin’s High End in Waltham, a short drive from Cambridge. Goodwin’s has been around a long time and carries some of the best equipment available. You can read about Goodwin’s,...
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